Edward Staub has had two themes that have run through his life from childhood ”“ doctoring and painting. His father, an orthopedic surgeon, encouraged the former theme. “He wasn”™t strong on me going in the artistic direction,” Staub said. “He thought it would be better to have a profession, to go into medicine or be a lawyer, which would be fine, too.” But not the arts.
Actually, the decision wasn”™t all that difficult. “In all fairness, I wasn”™t a Picasso when I was 10,” Staub said. “I think if I was doing work at that level, winning art prizes and having teachers say I had extraordinary talent, that would have been a different matter. But I had more talent than kids who couldn”™t draw a circle.” Not only that, but the uncertain economics of making a living as an artist served as a brake. He didn”™t see himself as a struggling artist in some cold studio painting with gloves.
Instead, he followed his father into orthopedic surgery, graduating from Albany Medical School in 1972 and completing his orthopedic residency at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan in 1976. He opened his own practice in Fairfield the next year after completing a fellowship studying hip replacement surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
Since then, his medical interest has centered on sports medicine, “which is really a natural offshoot of orthopedics,” he said. Orthopedic specialists “have always taken care of injuries in knees and shoulders, and that has become more specialized. When I was in my training, if someone had a torn cartilage in their knee, they”™d go to the hospital and have the knee opened up. In the mid-”™70s when I was finishing my training, they came out with arthroscopic surgery, which radicalized knee and other surgeries ”“ shoulders, ankles, elbows.”
The minimally invasive surgery, he said, has a quicker recovery time, “and now there”™s equal emphasis on rehabilitation and getting athletes back in shape, which was overlooked in the ”™50s and ”™60s.” The goal now with arthroscopic surgery ”“ “one of the great innovations in the latter part of the 20th Century” ”“ is to “get the athletes rehabilitated and back in the sport.”
Staub has an active sports clientele of area high school and college athletes “and a lot of weekend warriors, adults who are very active in sports and break things,” he said. “I basically treat kids from the Norwalk-Westport-Bridgeport area,” and opened an office in Norwalk a dozen years ago to make office visits more convenient for those patients.
Staub”™s move into sports medicine wasn”™t motivated from some lifelong involvement in competitive sports. He played some soccer in Fairfield”™s Andrew Ward High School, from which he graduated in 1964, but then concentrated on being a fan. “I”™ve always been a big sports fan,” he said, rooting for the Yankees and the Giants since he was a boy in the 1950s. But his love of sports worked its way into the second theme of his life ”“ oil painting.
Road warriors
“I”™ve been painting for just about my entire life,” Staub said. “I was artistic as a child and had some art lessons. I remember when I was in grammar school and high school, I was a good artist and was selected to decorate bulletin boards and things like that.” He painted through high school and college, and then really got serious when he opened his practice in Fairfield. “One of the practical things about my hobby was that early in my career as a doctor, I had an office and had to decorate it, so I thought it would be really cool to fill the office with colorful pictures of athletes.”
Today his offices are filled with oil paintings he”™s created from photographs of football players, weightlifters, basketball players ”“ even Mickey Mantle. “I just gave that one to my grandson,” Staub said. “He”™s only 2 and he doesn”™t know Mickey Mantle, but he will. We”™re brainwashing him to be a Yankees fan.”
Staub”™s technique has matured and changed over the years, especially after his wife, Meryl, took an art course at the Silvermine Guild Art Center in New Canaan in the late 1970s. He met Meryl when both attended Syracuse University ”“ she was an art major ”“ and they married in 1970. At Silvermine, Meryl learned “a way of using colors that resulted in getting bright, vibrant colors into the painting, which made them ever more dramatic,” he said.
Staub refined that technique over the years into a style of painting he calls realism, “which is almost a photographic style,” he said. “I try to treat my surgery patients with the same degree of exacting care I put into my paintings. I”™ve always been interested in photorealism, an extreme form of painting that looks just like a photograph. I don”™t put as much detail in it at that level, but if you stand far enough away from my painting, you can convince yourself that it”™s a photograph.”
For the past 15 years, he said, he has been painting “everyday people” rather than sports figures. “I”™ve done a lot of motorcycle people on their motorcycles because I think the subject matter is very interesting. I”™ve gone up to Marcus Dairy in Danbury during its Sunday motorcycle rallies and taken photographs of people and then painted them. That”™s what I”™ve won some awards for.”
Staub doesn”™t ride, “but I love the motorcycle, the chrome, the colors.” he said. “I think motorcyclists are modern American road warriors. The colors of their motorcycles and their garb, what they”™re wearing, can be very exciting.” And his background in anatomy from medical school and dealing with the human anatomy gives him an understanding of muscle and structure, which “I enjoy painting as opposed to doing landscapes.”
Second career
Staub, now 61, isn”™t thinking too deeply about retirement yet. “I love what I”™m doing, I feel great and I”™m in good health,” he said. “But I am developing my art and am going to open a Web site for it, and would like to show more and eventually sell it.”
The Web site is being built and should be up and running later this spring. Once it is, Staub will use it to display his art ”“ as well as showing his work at shows and galleries ”“ with any eye to selling them. “They would be several thousand dollars,” he said. “Some of them are very large and are very time consuming to do.”
Much of his early artwork still hangs in his offices “like a mini-art gallery,” he said. “My style has improved and evolved, so I do paint much better than I did 30 years ago.” Back then, the said, “I used to call my painting a hobby, but now I like to think of it as more than that. It”™s not really a hobby any more; it”™s more like a second career.”
